Blog

Programming insights to Storytelling, it's all here.

Ibrahim Diallo

May 2015

Working with bad software

Working with bad software

Movable Type is a blogging engine made by a husband and wife. It promises to take the hurdle of managing content of your website with a single solution. I've seen people who swear by it and I don't blame them. Every software sucks but if you spend enough time and effort you can make it suck a little less everyday. Movable Type is a solution for a multitude of problems and it does a good job solving them. But sometimes, it is also an awful choice.

Where do I find ideas?

Where do I find ideas?

Two friends went to their first meeting with an investor. They were developing an App and needed some money to quit their job and focus entirely on it. When they met the investor, he asked if they are both developers. The answer was no. So he asked them what is the role of each in building this application. One of the guys said, well I'm no developer but I came up with the idea. The question that followed offended the idea guy.

Morale

Morale

Failing often, making mistakes, struggling, hustling, this is the recipe to build character and success. That's what we hear on the receiving side of the podium.

Feedback is the new black

Feedback is the new black

The computer is a controlled environment. None of its parts is sparingly built. For every device attached to it, there is a team that tirelessly worked to bring to life. The programmers spend the better part of their day building software that, to the best of their knowledge, will never fail. But just in case they fail or don't go as planned, the same programmers throw errors to know exactly what went wrong.

The secret is, there is no secret

The secret is, there is no secret

The secret to lose 10 pounds in a week, the secret to be more productive, the secret to appear on Google's first page, the secret to become a millionaire. I used to read those, but now they seem more like a cheap attempt to make money off of desperate people. On the web, spam site took those books and refurbished them into click bait articles who exist for the sole purpose of generating more page views and ad impressions.

To programmers getting started

To programmers getting started

Shut the world out. Chose one language. Any. Then get started.

Boredom is a consumer problem

Boredom is a consumer problem

When the thing you do the most is consume, you are more likely to get bored. That could be shopping, watching TV, watching YouTube, surfing Reddit or reading articles on the web. All those things give you the illusion of being busy while all it's doing is releasing dopamine in your system.

Stealing Originality

Stealing Originality

"Good artists copy, great artists steal." The same quote has been used to justify the creation of beautiful art, and also to download pirated copies of movies. The web tends to take things of important value and turn them into a sad over emphasized joke. But I don't want to focus on that today. I want to explore how to create something original.

We complain, but programming is still fun

We complain, but programming is still fun

I went to re-read the stuff I write on this blog and yes, I tend to lean toward the negative side of things. The world of programming is complicated, it is stressful, it can be depressing, but it is also the best industry to be in.

The job you learn to love

The job you learn to love

I didn't love programming before I started. It was a mean to an end. I was broke, dropped out of college and needed to make a living. Programming was something that made sense to me. When I read code, it didn't feel like a coded language that could only be deciphered by smart people. To me it was simple sets of instructions that allowed communication with a computer. A computer's language. I didn't see a flash of light followed by a hipster song montage with me coding in the dark with the screen light shining on my nerd glasses. I don't even wear glasses.

Open source is not a charity

Open source is not a charity

It is tempting to think that the reason open source software works, is because it is free. Linux, Apache, Nginx, android are all open source software and they make the world go around. It helps that they cost nothing to get, but the reason they are so successful is because they are amazing pieces of software.

No one ever won an argument on the internet

No one ever won an argument on the internet

You are not going to convince anyone with facts and figures. Have you heard of the climate change argument? Have you heard of internet arguments?

JS Tip of the day

How to get an element position on the page

This used to be a painful thing to find on the page. Well it wasn't but almost everyone suggested you use a hacky way to find the correct position of an element…

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